- Day 54 of 366 Days of Writing Challenge: Spirit
- The Emotion Challenge: Scared
- Hogwarts Funfair/Hook-a-Duck: (plot point) Facing a Boggart
Pairings/Characters: Elladora
Word Count: 424
Start of a New Tradition
...and dear Aunt Elladora...she started the family tradition of beheading house-elves when they got too old to carry tea trays.
Elladora had cringed inwardly when her mother had tasked her with getting rid of the old Boggart that was residing in a dressing table upstairs, in order to practise her corporeal Patronus. If there was one thing that she really didn't care much for, it was the unknown.
Elladora had never faced a Boggart before. For several months, she had heard the thing rattling around in her mother's dressing table, but she had no idea what it's true form was. Her father told her that no one knew the Boggart's true form, as it represented whatever the person in front of it feared the most.
That was enough for Elladora to have mixed feelings about practising her Patronus on the Boggart. She was fourteen years old now, and she still didn't really know what she was truly afraid of.
As she entered her mother's bedroom, she wondered whether it would manifest itself like a spirit. Her brother, Phineas, had never been very fond of ghosts, so perhaps that was what she was truly afraid of. Advancing on the dressing table, she withdrew her wand, and reached out to unlatch it.
The dresser doors blew open, as though a powerful gust of wind was just waiting behind them. A plume of black smoke poured through the door and hovered in front of Elladora for a moment, as though it was contemplating her true fear.
"Ha!" Elladora laughed triumphantly. "I knew that I was afraid of nothing."
As she spoke, the plume of smoke began to manifest, causing the smile on her face to falter. She watched as it shrunk in height and width, forming an almost child-like figure. The head seemed to swell in comparison to the thin, gangly body, and it grew large, bat-like ears and huge, wide eyes.
"Would ma'am like some tea?" the House-Elf asked politely, staring up at Elladora with those unsightly, terrifying eyes.
She screamed instantly, a flood of realisation passing over her. Elladora had spent her entire life avoiding the family's servitude of House Elves, due to her incomprehensible fear of the tiny, human-like creatures.
"Expecto Patronum!" she yelled out, focusing on a happy memory. "Expecto Patronum!"
In the end, it wasn't a memory that Elladora focused on, but instead, a wish. A wish of the future, where she would ensure that those horrible House Elves ended up with their heads on her wall.
